Our friends Matt and Liz came over this weekend for our Halloween/All Saint’s Day/All Hallow’s Eve/Harvest Festival/Fall Party. Matt and Liz are among the most educated of the folks that will still associate with me – Liz is a lawyer (and former CVCA Latin teacher), and Matt is a dissertation away from a PhD in English. Matt is way-out-there smart – he taught Latin at CVCA for two years, knows more theology in his arm than I ever will, and is getting durn smart in English. Matt reminds me very much of my father-in-law, Dale. He can quote Milton, Shakespeare, the church fathers, Homer, and more. This makes Matt’s fascination with monster trucks, motorcycles, and Johnny Cash unexpected and much fun. (Note: I am not saying that monster truck folks can’t be interested in Milton – I just think it is unusual. Also, anyone that reminds me of Dale does not remind me of monster trucks.) So, Matt was very excited to learn that this year’s corn maze at Maize Valley Farms was Bigfoot-themed (this helped make up for the pain of missing the Nascar-themed maze two years ago). In honor of the occasion, Matt wore his “Official Redneck” hat. I expect this picture of Matt and Bigfoot will end up next to his wedding photos.

It was a very nice day – sunny and in the mid-50s. We got to Maize Valley just as they were shooting the much-coveted Pumpkin Cannon. I had missed it the last two years, so I was happy to get to see it. They were shooting it initially at a junk car, and then they put it at a 45-degree angle and shot for distance. I have no good sense of how far the pumpkins went, but I would term it as “far.”

After seeing the pumpkin cannon, I clearly needed to sit down, so we took the hay ride. In past years, the hay ride took you to the pumpkin patch to pick out your pumpkin. They moved the pumpkin patch, so this year the hay ride was an end in itself. We had a nice ride and chatted. They fired the cannon while we were down range from it, but we could never find the pumpkins in the sky, so we were not able to watch them.

After the ride, we went and looked at the farm animals. For fans of Travels With My Donkey, here is a gratuitous picture for you.

After the animals came the serious business of getting pumpkins. Carving pumpkins is the only holiday tradition that Mer and I have – this will be year 11 of carving pumpkins (for those doing the math, we did indeed have 2 illegitimate pumpkins before we were married). Getting the right pumpkin is important, and thus you can understand Mer’s happiness at finding her pumpkin. Matt and Liz each claimed to have not carved pumpkins in about 15 years! I tried not to judge them too harshly for this, and I was pleased at the thought that went into their selecting pumpkins. Oddly, they both ended up with green pumpkins. I look forward to seeing what they carve (we were not able to carve our pumpkins this weekend because of time constraints, but Matt and Liz promised to carve them and send pictures along).

Included in admission was the Bigfoot-shaped corn maze, but these things are more fun in the dark, so we headed the three miles back home for chili, rolls, and peanut-butter chocloate cake provided by the Hartville Kitchen. You are probably starting to get the idea that this kind of evening is very much my speed, and you would be right – good food, good company, nice weather, ambling about a field, and projectile gourds. Life is good.

After supper, I talked about carving pumpkins, but Mer pointed out that we might run out of time for the corn maze, so we headed out. I love corn mazes – there is simple fun in wandering around lost in the dark, in corn. Maize Valley also has a popular haunted corn maze, which we did not do. However, it adds to the fun to be wandering around in your corn maze and hear a chainsaw followed by screams from the haunted maze.

Our maze looked promising. The corn was really high – about 7+ feet tall. It adds considerably to the experience if you cannot see over the corn. We wandered into the maze, following Liz’s lead. She soon stated that as a lawyer, she merely advised, so someone else would have to make decisions. The first slight hitch of the maze was that one section we came to was under about 2 or 3 inches of water. We decided to go another way – no great harm there. The object of this maze was to find a bell in the maze and ring it. We heard it every once in awhile, but not very often. After being in the maze a short while, we did hear it nearby. We went in the direction of the sound, and saw the bell. One slight irritation I have in corn mazes is that people trample the corn down to make their own paths. The place we saw the bell was at the end of one of these unofficial paths. If the corn was still standing, we would have been five feet from the bell and not been able to see it or get to it. As it was, it seemed a little silly to pretend we had not seen it. That, combined with the water in the maze, convinced us to ring the bell and exit the maze. Ringing the bell was a challenge – the bell was about nine feet off the ground, and the pull rope had come off and was lying on the ground. I picked it up, and managed to loop it around the pull arm. I got one ring out of the bell when the rope jammed in the pivot point and jammed the bell. Then, trying to fix that, I pulled the pull-rope off again. Smooth. Still, I did get it back on for one more ring. We were only in the maze for about 15 minutes, but there is always next year.

We did run into two guys who were carrying a spotlight flashlight – it was probably the brightest flashlight I have ever seen. It took several seconds to stop glowing when the guy holding it turned it off. Neat.

On the way out, we passed the entrance to the haunted maze. They had a  cool pumpkin there that made me think of Sonotmu (thinking he would like it). There was no wussy candle in this pumpkin – it had a real fire in it! It was pretty darn creepy and cool.

Once we got back to where we had parked, we spent several minutes looking up at the stars. It was a clear evening, and Matt and Liz do not get to see stars often (they live in Akron where it is not dark enough to see many stars). We got to see a shooting star. We discovered that we know almost nothing about the stars – we did find the Big Dipper, but could not agree on where the North Star was (later, I looked it up and it was not very high in the sky, which was not really where we were looking).

So, we ended the evening back at our house, where we chatted some more (after I looked up some stars and planets using Stellarium). Matt and Liz had to take off to let their dog (Charlie) out. It was a pretty great evening.